| Galleries » Modern British Paintings 1900-1950 » Naum Gabo |
| Naum Gabo (1890-1977) was a constructionist
artist in a variety of materials, as well as being a designer, writer and teacher. He was
born in Bryansk, Russia, as Naum Pevsner, brother of the painter Antoine Pevsner. As a
young man he changed his name to Naum Gabo so as not to be confused with his brother. Gabo
entered Munich University in1910 to study medicine, then natural sciences, but also
attended art history lectures. In 1912, he transferred to an engineering school in Munich,
in 1913-14 joining his brother in Paris. When World War I broke out he moved to
Copenhagen, then Oslo, in 1915 beginning to make constructions. Although sometimes
figurative,. these were generally abstract, simple and beautiful using a variety of
materials, notably later Perspex when he came to England. From 1917-22 Gabo was in Moscow, where he knew advanced artists such as Tatlin and Kandinsky. In 1920 with Pevsner, he produced a Realistic Manifesto outlining the tenets of pure constructivism. From 1922 for a decade he was in Berlin in contact with the artists of the de Stijll and Bauhaus movement. With Pevsner he designed for Diaghilev's ballet La Chatte in 1926; then from 1932-6 lived in Paris, and was a member the Abstraction-Creation 'group. After arriving in England in 1936, he helped edit the manifesto volume Circle. By now he was married to the painter Miriam Israels, and with her he settled in St Ives, Cornwall, where he was an influential figure. Soon after World War II, Gabo moved to the USA, where he became an American citizen in 1952, and carried out important commissions as well as becoming Professor of the Graduate School of Architecture at Harvard University. He had a retrospective show at the Tate Gallery in 1966, and again in 1976 after which he gifted them a gallery of a group of his works. There was a further retrospective at the Tate in 1987. Gabo died in Wateringbury, Connecticut. |
